Summer

Quotes for Those that Love
Gardens, Gardening, and the Green Way

Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

July        August       September

The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying.  Its fragrant, delicate petals
open fully and are ready to fall, without regret or disillusion, after only a day
in the sun.  It is so every summer.  One can almost hear their pink, fragrant
murmur as they settle down upon the grass:
'Summer, summer, it will always be summer.'
-   Rachel Peden

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. 
My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music.  It is a fire that
solitude presses against my lips.
- Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit

If a June night could talk,
it would probably boast it invented romance.
-  Bern Williams

Autumn - Quotes for Gardeners

He stood beside a cottage lone
And listened to a lute,
One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute.
-  Thomas K. Hervey, 1799-1859, The Devil's Progress

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
-  Russel Baker

That beautiful season the Summer!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
-   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

July - Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Links, Chores

Dirty hands, iced tea, garden fragrances thick in the air and
a blanket of color before me, who could ask for more?
-   Bev Adams, Mountain Gardening by the Gardening Gal

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always
been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
-  Henry James

Flowers - Quotes for Gardeners

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment
of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind
one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
-  Gertrude Jekyll,  On Gardening

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass
on a summer day listening to the murmur of water,
or watching the clouds float across the sky,
is hardly a waste of time.
-   John Lubbock

Food  - Quotes for Gardeners

So fades a summer cloud away;
So sinks the gale when storms are o'er;
So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies a wave along the shore.
-  Mrs. Barbauld, 1743-1825, The Death of the Virtuous

August - Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Links, Chores

Summer makes me drowsy,
Autumn makes me sing,
Winter’s pretty lousy,
but I hate Spring.
-   Dorothy Parker

Summer makes a silence after spring.
-   Vita Sackville-West

hot August night;
scent of crushed lantana leaves
thickens the air
-   Trilby, Modesto, California

Inebriate of Air - am I -
And Debauchee of Dew -
Reeling through endless summer days -
From inns of Molten Blue.
- Emily Dickinson, No. 214, St. 2, 1860

Vegetables - Quotes for Gardeners

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, 
in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.   
-  Sir Francis Bacon

This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes
a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for
those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower
and human shoulders.
-   Sarah Orne Jewett, The Courting of Sister Wisby, 1887

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
-   William Shakespeare,  Sonnet XVIII, 
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

I know I am but summer to your heart,
and not the full four seasons of the year.
-   Edna St. Vincent Millay

Clapping my hands
with the echoes the summer moon
begins to dawn.
-   Basho

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes,  Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Over 6 MB of Text.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water,
rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down
into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of
reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green,
frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with
the purple globes of eggplant and the
scarlet wealth of tomatoes.
-  Doris Lessing, The Habit of Loving

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods
-   Robert Frost, Summer Woods

Fairest of the months!  Ripe summer's queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear.
-   R. Combe Miller

Summer Weather Proverbs

Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year.
It brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.
-   Billy Graham

How can one help shivering with delight when one's
hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower,
cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor!
-   Colette

A life without love is like a year without summer.
-   Swedish Proverb

T'is now the summer of your youth. Time has not cropt the roses from
your cheek,  though sorrow long has washed them.
-   Edward Moore. 1712-1757,  The Gamester, Act 3

It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.
-   N.P. Willis

Fruits and Nuts - Quotes for Gardeners

Zucchinis terrific!
Like bunnies, prolific!

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining,
the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing,
and the lawn mower is broken.
-   James Dent

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay.
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon.
A swarm of bees in July is not worth a fly.

Summer Sonnets

The old, wooden shed
Stranded in a sea of wheat,
Waiting for harvest.
-   Daniel Denault

Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!
Life's a short summer, man a flower;
He dies - alas! how soon he dies!
-  Samuel Johnson. 1709-1784,  Winter. An Ode

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
-  Francis Thompson, 1859-1907

Summertime Haiku Poems

Mosquito is out,
it's the end of the day;
she's humming and hunting
her evening away.
Who knows why such hunger
arrives on such wings
at sundown? I guess
it's the nature of things.
-   N. M. Boedecker,  Midsummer Night Itch

All your renown is like the summer flower that
blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which
brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.
-   Dante Alighieri

We go in withering July
To ply the hard incessant hoe;
Panting beneath the brazen sky
We sweat and grumble, but we go.
-   Ruth Pitter, 1897-1992, The Diehards, 1941

September - Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Links, Chores

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie  - 
True Poems flee -
-   Emily Dickinson

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, 
for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.   
-   Carl von Linnaeus

Indian summer.
One swallow doesn't make a summer.
School's out for summer.
As hot as hell.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day.
The English summer:  three fine days and a thunderstorm.
The silly season.
-  Cliches - Quotes for Gardeners

Now is the time of the illuminated woods ...
when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
- J. Burroughs

Spring  - Quotes for Gardeners

T'is the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone.
-  Thomas Moore, 1779-1852, The Last Rose of Summer.

Summer is a promissory note signed in June,
its long days spent and gone before you
know it, and due to be repaid next January.
-   Hal Borland

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's
clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered
spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the
belief that all's right with the world.
-    Ada Louise Huxtable

"O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
-   Walt Whitman

golden barley grass
straw in the wind from summer's heat
dormant green unseen
-  Scott, Paso Robles, California

July brings harsh drought
but the sun is ripe; heat as thick
as tomato skins.
-  kite

How sociable the garden was.
We ate and talked in given light.
The children put their toys to grass
All the warm wakeful August night.
-   Thom Gunn, Last Days at Teddington

Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason enough to plod ahead.
Where are the fig blossoms?  Exceptions to every rule.
Gardens are demanding pets.
Sunset!!   The mosquitoes attack - we retreat. 
Also true:  A crape myrtle is a crape myrtle is a crape myrtle. 
-  Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions:  Quips and Thoughts of a Gardener

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light;
Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.
-   Mark Twain